VADA'S NEW FART PUTTY

air bellows drive-thru art museum

 

 

On the road home from seeing the race, I'd made a mental note passing through the Air Bellows Drive-Thru Art Museum to stop and get some pictures on the way back. The light was good. I parked out of the way. It is a natural law that if I were to stop inside the tunnel and get out to take a picture, the first thing to happen would be a car to come along. As it was, as soon as I stepped inside the tunnel to view the two walls, here came a red corvette, a blond babe driving it and a man my age sitting in the passenger seat, out on a Sunday ride with his trophy thangs. I stepped outside the tunnel to wait for them to pass through. He looked at me with disapproval. I looked at him unimpressed. I walked around in the space between the two walls like a Joan Mitchell was on one wall and a Cy Twombly on the other. I was feeling what I feel in museums standing in front of something by Anselm Kiefer or Adolph Gottlieb, the presence of Art. Real art has the presence of a living being. Inside the Air Bellows Drive-Thru Art Museum, I feel the presence of walls as though alive. It helps to be in love with the random and chance. I see the art of chance, pure chance. Chance in colors, chance in words, chance in images. A collage of a lot of different people with no design in mind, only making a mark, adding a color, a name, a word, a phrase, a sentence, whatever happens.

 

 

air bellows drive-thru art museum

air bellows drive-thru art museum

 

I was in a groove, it's the same as the Museum of Modern Art for me, making photographs in actual awe of what I was seeing. My pictures are composed, sort of, level, featuring something interesting, not random. Next time in there, I'll focus on making random photographs. The ideal would be to have Vada in the museum with camera and ask her to take all the pictures she wants. I'd like to take a panorama camera in there. I was flowing in my groove when a mini-SUV appeared, new middle-class model, a woman my age with a coffee house disapproving eye, a flatlander. She stopped at the entrance to wait for me to get out of there so she could drive through. The place is wide enough for a truck with big side mirrors to pass through easily. I backed up to the wall, the one above with Sydney on it, facing the wall above it with the pink heart, holding camera. I was not going to leave so she could drive through. It's a long tunnel and I did not feel like walking the distance out of there and back. She kept on waiting and I kept on standing. I thought, if you can't drive through here, you can wait for me til I'm done. She looked at me in disgust and crept by. On the back of the car a Ben Carson sticker. I thought: you're dumber'n you look. It hit me by total surprise. If I'd had to guess what republican clown sticker would be on the back of her car, I'd have never guessed Carson with a dozen chances. Cracked me up.

 

vada poses

vada dances

 

I arrive at the house. Vada is playing on the kitchen floor. She jumped and ran to me holding a clear plastic cylinder of purple goo. She held it up for me to see. "I got some new fart putty!!!" She was excited as only a child can be. I said, "Fart putty?" She said, "Yeah!" She pushed her fingers into it and it made a fart sound. She giggled like a child. She pulled the purple gom out of the container and it made a long string stretching to the floor. She made a bracelet of it and it slowly slunk to the floor oozing to a small purple circle. She called it cow poop. She wanted me to make donkey poop with it. I wadded some into a ball about donkey poop size. She wanted to hold it. I put it in her hands and its inclination toward the floor began, flattening in her hands, stringing to the floor. She watched the whole process in awe of this stuff that acts like it's alive. She had it in small circles on the floor around her, strings of it like skinny snakes on the tiles, enchanted with this purple ooze. She had a plastic doll six inches or so high, a dress-up doll in underwear, Elsa's friend Anna. Vada shaped the fart putty into a dress on the doll. Immediately, it began the ooze process, and while it oozed, the dress became more and more interesting. She packed it onto the doll, covering the doll from neck down. The oozing created the dress by clinging to the doll while oozing. It was like a dress in a Munch painting, the color too. I didn't think to make a video, it was so spontaneous a moment, Vada so fascinated, so focused, dressing her little plastic dolls in purple fart putty. I did not want to spoil the moment with a camera.

 

vada dances

 

 

the new mancave theater curtain

Settled into the mancave to watch the race at Watkins Glen. Good race. They ran hard. I was pulling for Joey Logano this time. I always pull for Joey Logano. He's a good driver and drives a beautiful car. Kyle Busch has had his share of attention lately. Another driver I like is Keselowski, but his car couldn't keep up today. I like the way Logano smokes the tires after a win. Once, I saw him burn the tires off the rims. Justin watched the race with disinterest today, because Kyle Busch has been winning every race and Jr Earnhardt couldn't do better than fourth and fifth. He doesn't like Logano, doesn't like either Busch, the drivers I like. He doesn't know I'm partial to these drivers, I never speak it. I'm happy for every one of them when they get a win. It seems to me a commendable achievement to outrun all the other cars handled by good drivers going pedal to the metal, fast as the road allows, snapping at your heels. It is a long time from beginning to end. Vada, the natural-born entertainer, danced for me, posed for me, kept my attention from going into stasis gaping at cars and commercials on tv. She likes to pose for picture taking. She likes me taking pictures of her while she plays. A time will come that she'll say, That's enough, and she's done. Persist and she'll say, Stop it! She danced for the video camera, saying at the beginning the redneck's famous last words, Watch this! She danced and danced in her Elsa dress until she'd performed enough. She wanted the camera, took it out of my hands and made video of me. I told her to get her daddy who was stretched out on the couch in semi slumber. She made an abstract portrait of daddy, something director Lars von Trier might like, mostly way out of focus, sometimes sharp focus. Vada was the star of the day.

 

vada dances

vada dances

 

vada and daddy

 

 

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